Pater Et Filii
by Darkflame's Pyre
Summary: 'Father and Sons'. Jeff's thoughts on each of his young sons in the December following Lucille's death. A companion to 'To the Stars'. Fic Five of the Bound Oneshot Collection. Movie-verse.


**A/N: Here's another one-shot. It's slightly different to the other two… The title means basically 'father and sons' in Latin, which I have altered since first posting, because the site I used was wrong. Thanks RVfan for the correction! ****Xx**

** Please enjoy… **

**Disclaimer: If not for Sylvia and Gerry Anderson, I would not be able to play in this wonderful playground, so no; I do not own the Thunderbirds.**

My actions were unforgivable; I was too consumed with the loss of my wife to notice the waning of my sons.

I used the sole excuse of needing to get my business off the ground to give us a continuous and stable income in order to keep my children with a roof over their head, and food in their tummies, but in reality; I was hiding from the fact that my wife of almost eighteen years had died, and I was too afraid to re-emerge and face it. I was there for my sons in a physical way, but not in heart and mind. That was what made it worse.

I hadn't noticed that Scott was wearing himself down; staying up too late every day to keep up with school, taking on the duties of a father, rather than that of the brother.

It is with a heavy heart that I have noticed that six-year-old Alan now goes to Scott when he falls down; when he has done a piece of artwork at school, or just wants an enthusiastic ear to listen to him chatter. It is Scott that he wants when he wakes in the middle of the night, because of the nightmares about the accident that my youngest and eldest boys were in twelve months ago.

He has grown away from me, my baby boy; just because I was fool enough to pretend that if I couldn't see the problem, it would go away, that I wouldn't have to face the loss of my wife if I couldn't be reminded of her. True, my boys are closer now than they ever have been; but it also has cost me the closeness I used to share with them, and deprived my eldest son of the remains of his childhood.

My two sons watched their mother die, and almost lost their lives themselves.

John, Virgil and Gordon had to watch alongside me as the EMTs battled to save their siblings, while already shattered by the fact that their mother wouldn't be coming home.

I hate that I was not a father to my boys when they most needed me; that I was too selfish not to realise that my babies were hurting, and that I had left them on their own to cope with their grief. I hate that I was not there to comfort them, guide them and show that I love them; it would have helped me as much, if not more to endure it together with my children; I hate myself in the actions I made in the aftermath of the accident. It is irreversible and irreparable in my eyes, and it haunts me every day.

Scott understands. I can see it in his eyes as he looks at me from his place at the dinner table.

Despite the three months that have elapsed since his diagnosis with Glandular Fever, he is still weak and tired, though he tries to show me otherwise. It has really taken it out of him, and I know that I am to blame. He may still have managed to catch his illness if my behaviour was different, but I am sure that it wouldn't have affected him so badly if I hadn't allowed him to get so run-down.

_ It is okay, son. You don't need to cut up Alan's meal; you don't need to calm him after a storm, tuck him into bed, you don't have to drop him and the others at school. Father is back… Daddy is here again. _

But it is too late, I know. He is already grown.

My Flyboy, the first of my progeny; it fills me with an overwhelming sense of pride that my eldest boy still wants to be like his old man; though the very idea of my son being a fighter-pilot scares me witless. But like his father and grandfather before him, Scott Carpenter Tracy has never been one for doing things half-way.

Completely and utterly stubborn, and three times as temperate, my firstborn is like a dragon with its eggs over anything even remotely threatening to his little brothers, and he is already a man; in everything but title.

By far my quietest boy, John is a dreamer. Never one to hold back feelings; not because he doesn't want to, but because he is simply unable.

John is the one most like my Luce out of them all. From the arctic-blue eyes that are a window to his soul, and the heart that is practically the size of North America, he is the one that keeps us all grounded, always there and relatively hidden until you are able to draw him into conversation, the touchstone and the calm eye of the storm that is our family.

Never one to let his true feelings known until he is sure that whatever is ailing others is dealt with first, I must admit with the greatest guilt, that aside from Scott, John is the one who has been most affected by his mother's death.

Ghost-like and silent, my John almost didn't make it to his fifteenth birthday. And he still isn't out of the woods; nowhere near. Tired, skinny and sickly, it wasn't until Scott's illness was under control and he was on the way to recovery, that John let me know how off he had been feeling.

By then, the cancer had almost killed him.

I see him now as he sits at the table, and I am thankful that spaghetti is at least one meal that he is able to keep within the confines of his stomach; stripped as it is at the lining from the bile he expels daily from the chemo and radiation that is keeping him alive.

I still am in a state of utter disbelief that I could be so damn blind as to not notice that my son was dying before my very eyes, because I didn't know him well enough anymore to know that he was hiding something from me.

Virgil is only twelve, and wise well beyond his years. Though he doesn't look half as much like Lucy as my second and youngest sons, it is his personality traits that remind me of his mother more than anything else.

As much as John has inherited his mother's singing voice and talent with words and writing, it is Virgil that has her love for classical music, and the astounding aptitude with the piano and violin that caught my attention back in my junior year of high-school.

He is far too perceptive, my third boy. He is intuitively minded, and never backs down from a challenge. Once the situation has been thought through, Virgil is nothing if not driven when it comes to seeing something to the end; waiting patiently to the very end of time if it means that the job will be complete, and completed well. The soulful green-brown eyes and light chestnut hair of my 'absent-minded professor', are unassuming when it comes to discovering the enormous talent and intelligence that Virgil exhibits both in the arts, and the creation of his marvellous contraptions, and he is unrelenting and fierce when it comes to holding to a fact that he believes is the right course of action.

He too, understands the reasons why I have left them for so long, but unlike Scott, Virgil doesn't entirely believe my words when I say that I will be here for them from now on.

I can hardly refute his feelings when that is exactly the opposite of what I had been doing those last nine months, even after promising my children that I would be always be there for them at the time of their mother's funeral. I now have to cobble together the best I can the remains of my son's trust and hope that one day he can see that I am determined to repair the damage my negligence has done, and forgive me for my terrible mistake.

Gordon. My redhead, my Spitfire and the bright spark in our midst. Arguably, he is the perfect mix of me, Lucy, and that of all his elder brothers.

My water-baby is the only one of my boys that seems to have the least amount of interest in sky-bound machines, though he more than makes up for it with his passion with all things beneath the waterline. I smile though, as I have noticed that his overwhelming love of speed is something that, like with most of his siblings, is something I have to watch; as it will undoubtedly get him in trouble someday.

At first sight, the ten-year-old is seemingly untouched by the tragedy that has hit our family over the past year, but when one looks closer at my second-youngest son and his bearing, you can see the look hidden in his emerald eyes; my mother's own, and you can see the hurt that is buried deeply within his gentle heart, concealed behind his laughter, and the practical jokes that are his way of coping.

I will never know how exactly he kept going in the time that I was absent from my children's lives. I only know the little snippets that Scott has told me my little water-child let through in his rare quiet moments, and I know that I somehow need to sit down with each of my boys, despite our status as 'men', and talk with them about Lucy's passing.

My Spitfire is the blazing flame that keeps the rest of us on our toes; the fire that burns brighter with every day.

My youngest boy, Alan is the last of the seven greatest gifts that my Lucy ever gave me; the soft spot of our family and the apple of his brothers' eyes.

Every bit as hot-headed as the rest of them, Alan is inquisitive and my danger-magnet; impulsive, reckless and only just the most fiery of the five boys. I shudder to think of what may have happened if Alan had been born even two years earlier; the kid is surely Gordon's twin in all but age.

I have a terrible feeling that I am going to go grey before the kid even hits middle-school, if Gordon is anything to go by. The shining light of innocence that remains in our family, I am both glad and miserable that he will not remember this time; as it will not only let him forget the rift I created, but will also separate him from the memories of his mother; for there is no way to remember one without the other.

I know that I must rebuild my Alan's needfulness of me, become mother as well as father; for as much as Scott is doing an amazing job of raising his siblings, it is high time I took full control of the helm of our family of wild ones, and show my boys that I can be depended on.

Alan is slowly realising that his Daddy is here to stay; to give him a bedtime kiss and hug, to read him stories, to hold him close to my chest and have him fall asleep in my arms. He is one of the last links I have to Lucy, and I had ignored him so much that he barely knew who I was. That is slowly changing, for the very best.

I know that I will remember my sons this way for all eternity; forever irrevocably changed by the devastation that was that French Alps avalanche. Though forged in a disparity that I, myself had unintentionally caused, I know that they each will burn as brightly as every one of the thousands of stars that their namesakes explored.

My boys will again be certain that I will be there to build them up when they have fallen down; to hold them when they experience their losses and gains, their highs and lows. I wish to again be their light in the darkness; cheer for them when they become decorated pilots; famous writers; world-renowned engineers; championship swimmers and race-car drivers; as they tell me so many times they will be, as we lay there in the field on hot summer's nights, chasing the paths to dreams that the stars have not illuminated to them quite yet. The world is their playground, and right now they are whatever they wish to be.

My boys are my life. Pater et filii; father and sons; we are forever united. Maybe one day, with the strengthened restitching of the ties that bind us together, we can help prevent other disasters from cleaving us into pieces, but there is no worry now.

I only intend to be there to see them grow; wish to see them become men before my very eyes, and I will be there every step of the way. Because that is what a father does.

**A/N: Thanks for reading….What did you all think?**

**-Pyre Xx**


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